Healing spec & raid composition

Hi all,
I've always been a Holy/Disc priest. Lately I've been asked to have a DPS off-spec, so decided to leave Disc behind (merely a choice due to personal preference). However, I think I might be wrong according to our raid composition.

At the moment, in fight in which 3 healers are needed we have me (Holy priest), a Holy Paladin and a Monk. The point is, I feel a bit useless when looking at meters. It looks like my heals do not arrive "in time" or, let's say, they hit their targets when other healers have already topped health bars... It seems that my only chance to "shine" is waiting for others to get oom. I thought it could be a problem due to reforging, since I preferred mastery over haste, but I noticed this happens only while I'm healing in 10-men raids and not in 25.

Should I respec Disc, so that I can get advantage of absorbs mechanics? I know the main goal for a group is succedding in progress, but I'd like to be a competitive healer as I used to be.

Disc has better synergy, however isn't in a great place atm. You shouldn't judge your performance based purely on the meters, if there's no damage to heal then simply don't heal and conserve mana. Raiding is a team effort after all.

Spirit Kings is all about timing, and there are huge luls in damage where smiting is viable (even on heroic!). I wouldn't say disc priests are necessarily better than any other healer on this fight, but they're definitely viable.

Elegon heroic doesn't really require two healers outside of the end & P2 (add phase). The damage the raid takes is actually mostly less than on normal, although the tanks obviously take more damage. Twist of fate is amazing on this fight at the end...

Emps as far as I can see is similar to Feng in the sense that you have large tank damage inter-dispersed with raid damage (gas phases).

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Don't respec disc to pad meters. If you're not required to heal then don't heal. If your heals are not arriving "in time", then they are likely not needed, unless your other healers are going oom. If they are then kindly suggest they stop trying to pad meters themselves & think more carefully about whether people need to be topped off so fast. It's like on Elegon normal when the add explodes, there is no rush what-so-ever to heal the raid up because there is literally no damage incoming till a new add spawns.

Disc has better synergy, however isn't in a great place atm. You shouldn't judge your performance based purely on the meters, if there's no damage to heal then simply don't heal and conserve mana. Raiding is a team effort after all.

There's always room to improve, even when everyone lives, and that doesn't always mean "you did it right". Without having a log parse to compare and see how much overhealing you had and what the other two healers were doing, it's difficult to say what would be better. I personally (and it sounds like you do also) prefer healing as holy right now. I'm the opposite in that my MS is shadow and I heal holy on the fights where we are utilizing three healers. If you are feeling useless as a healer on some encounters, it sounds like your raid group should be using two healers for those anyway. Two healing some of the fights makes them significantly easier from my experience. That may be why they asked you to pick up shadow? My other two heals are a paladin and shaman (10 man), and we don't seem to have issues with heal sniping or anything. Knowing what tools you have available and using them at the right time is much more important than pumping out the most HPS. If you have a log you can post that would help a lot and give some insight. In the end you should play what you enjoy. There are many posts with arguments for both specs right now, so it doesn't really matter which you play in terms of synergy.

Tonight I think we (my raid and me) found the answer to my question. This was the first time we were raiding without our monk, a very skilled healer, and guess what? Both in fights with 2 healers (me - holy priest - and holy pally) and with 3 (me, holy pally and shaman) I was topping the meters.

So, we were wondering: were my previous performances low because of monks' haste? That would explain why I had the impression my spell just did not heal in time, since I am mainly mastery reforged. Has anybody else had the same issue?

Tonight I think we (my raid and me) found the answer to my question. This was the first time we were raiding without our monk, a very skilled healer, and guess what? Both in fights with 2 healers (me - holy priest - and holy pally) and with 3 (me, holy pally and shaman) I was topping the meters.

So, we were wondering: were my previous performances low because of monks' haste? That would explain why I had the impression my spell just did not heal in time, since I am mainly mastery reforged. Has anybody else had the same issue?

It has nothing to do with monks going haste (if you meant it as a stat) and you going mastery, as you should.

It has to do with the fact that monks just put Renewing Mist on the entire raid and Uplift is an instant spell more powerful than your PoHs, which even take casting time.

If a monk plans his RM correctly in 10men, he'll always have the entire raid HoT'd right before the big AoE damage comes, and instantly heal everyone up with Uplift, and ther's nothing you can do as holy.

What you're describing sounds like you can cut the healers to 2. In a fight that requires 3 healing, you won't find yourself looking at raid frames with everyone topped off (for the most part). Disc might be a better choice in that you can smite heal for a bit of extra DPS.

On the other hand if your Monk healer is going oom because of it, then the healers need to coordinate better so that the load is more balanced.

Disc is in a perfect place atm, if you've got a pally with you that's probably he best 10 man comp you can get. Don't listen to people telling you disc is bad, they just don't know how to play it. I've never healed with someone who wasn't bitching that he couldn't heal because I'd absorb 90% of incoming damage.

---------- Post added 2012-11-07 at 10:21 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Izenhart

It has to do with the fact that monks just put Renewing Mist on the entire raid and Uplift is an instant spell more powerful than your PoHs, which even take casting time.

This is supposing that the priest is incapable of preventively applying spirit shell and/or divine aegis, in which case, you shouldn't be playing disc, or priest, or any healer imo. Just go druid or shamy and spam rejuv or your totems if you can't anticipate.

This isn't true any more, please stop monkeying everyone else and keep up to date with changes.

Disc has received a huge amount of buffs and hotifixes and it's an extremely strong specc now. Of course, on some fights we shine more than on others, but such is fight design. With a monk and a paladin in your setup, disc seems to indeed complement your setup better than holy.

Most of the time it's me + a monk healer in 10 mans. I prefer the play style of Holy and am better at it, but I'm thinking Disc will be the way forward. The damage in most fights is really predictable and intense raid wide damage and being able to negate that effectively through absorbs will likely be more useful than struggling against the monk on the meters who just snipes everything with renewing mists (jab jab uplift anyone?)

That being said I would really like the range on PoH to be upgraded to 40 yards for both specs. It's already pretty clunky as a party only heal, at least I can be sure it will hit everyone on fights with extensive spreading.

Tried Disc tonight, with Darkglow Embroidery + Shado-Pan trinket I was so high on Spirit that Rapture regen was amazing. Disc has indeed better synergies in a monk+hpally setup, I think I'll stay Disc.

Tried Disc tonight, with Darkglow Embroidery + Shado-Pan trinket I was so high on Spirit that Rapture regen was amazing. Disc has indeed better synergies in a monk+hpally setup, I think I'll stay Disc.

Your heals are being sniped by the Monk (mostly) and Pally. Monk's and Pally AOE Heals are instant (except for radiance). Uplift is the best heal sniping spell because it can heal the whole 10 man raid in 1 button. But it seems like if you are just storing your mana because they heal the raid up before you have a chance to then I say you should consider 2 healing like others have said.